Searching for the missing pieces of climate change communication

Saved at last!

The Paris climate circus has ended and although I didn’t do much effort to follow it during those two weeks, hearing about it was really entertaining. Alway surprising, like an onion slowly peeling off.

Like at the end of the conference when they had a bad time agreeing on a 2 °C target. Then they changed that to a 1.5 °C target and that seemed to solve their problem… 🙂

That is pure magic, no less!

Or Laurent Fabius (French Foreign Minister and president of the COP21) said that “The final accord will be legally binding and seek to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius”. Later that day he concluded the Conference by saying as fast as he could: “I am looking at the room, I see the reaction is positive, the Paris climate accord is accepted!”. Down went that hammer, delegates burst out in cheering and gave themselves a big round of applause.

Wow! Is this how “legally binding” agreements are made nowadays? Call me old fashioned, but shouldn’t they actually sign something or so? 🙂 And wasn’t there that problem with the USA that clearly stated that they would not accept a legally binding agreement? So, what did he actually meant by “binding”?

The next day the backpedaling began: according to a Belgian delegate, the best thing about the agreement was that everyone was on the same line, even the developing countries.

Yeah, right.

Then he said that emissions will still go up in the future, actually, emissions of developing countries will go UP until at least 2020.

Yeah, they got the developing countries on the same line, for sure.

According to the same delegate, the transition would spread over several generations anyway…

Huh, before the conference, it couldn’t go quick enough, we could wean of fossil fuels in no time. We had to do it for the children. Now we hear that our children will do the job.

Only sparsely the information dropped in: a reporter explained that in the text “shall” (binding) became “should” (voluntary) to allow the USA to circumvent their Parliament.

So far for a “binding” agreement.

It didn’t stop there. The longer, the more surprising elements kept on popping up. Every country could define its own targets and how to specifically reach them, no sanctions for countries that didn’t do what they said (except social control), the agreement will only signed next year, canceling is possible (but hey, countries will not do that, social control, ya’know),…

Basically, they lowered their expectation so much that everybody could agree with it and then sold that to the public as a success.

The most surprising thing still had to come. On Monday I read two different news papers and found only a couple pages on that incredible, unprecedented, crucial COP21 success. It wasn’t even frontpage news, but buried somewhere in the back.

So, understand my bewilderment: here we were told that this was a historical agreement … an incredible success … a victory for life on earth and our children… herds of bureaucrats migrated to Paris and declared that they have SAVED THE WORLD FROM THIS HORRIBLE GLOBAL WARMING … finally … after so many years of trying … and … hardly any mention of it in the news papers …

In the meanwhile, the wedding of Stromae (a Belgian rapper), right there on the frontpage.